Kenneth Wasmund

Screenshot of TV with Trump, JD Vance Hegseth and Milei in White House

The #BBC #News Channel is live casting from the White House, airing the usual drivel coming from #Trump unedited, uncommented.

Please, cut the key bits out, spare us the inappropriate ad hominems to public figures. This is normalisation of completely unacceptable behaviour.

2/3 As I am in my way retirement in the coming years, I would like to donate this unique collection to an academic laboratory with a genuine interest in siderophore biology and a clear vision for putting these compounds to good use in research. If you or your group are interested, please contact me

The team at our research site in the alps

📣 New PhD student position opening in my lab!
Soils are full of microbes, but how many are active?
Surprisingly, we still lack reliable methods to answer this.
If you are interested in microbial dormancy and are fascinated by the Alps and glacier forefields, contact me.
🏔️ 🦠 💤 🧬 🎓

Extracellular electron transfer in cable bacteria enables growth rates comparable to aerobic respiration www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #jcampubs

Postdoctoral position on methanotrophic bacteria - Vacancy at Aarhus University Vacancy at Department of Biology - Microbiology, Aarhus University

I'm recruiting a postdoc to figure out how aerobic methanotrophic bacteria oxidise methane in anoxic freshwater sediment environments: international.au.dk/about/profil... Come to Aarhus University in Denmark and work on this 2-year project funded by @villumfonden.bsky.social!

Paternal exercise confers endurance capacity to offspring through sperm microRNAs Yin et al. show that paternal exercise improves offspring endurance capacity and metabolic health via sperm microRNAs that reprogram gene expression in early embryos, revealing how exercise benefits c...

Exercising fathers, enhanced endurance and metabolic heath in offspring, through sperm microRNAs (as demonstrated in mice)
www.cell.com/cell-metabol...

📢We're hiring!📢

We have a permanent Lecturer in Earth Sciences position available in @OU_EEE
@OpenUniversity

£47,389 to £56,535
Closing Date: 20 October 2025*

We are a friendly, research intensive school with supportive colleagues and great labs.

jobs.open.ac.uk/job/Lecturer...

A BLIND ELDERLY man using a mobility cane is ARRESTED for holding a sign which read "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action"

#PalestineAction #GazaGenocide

I wonder how much of the keeping up with friends decline is just the enshitification of Facebook and Insta. Facebook materially improved my life by reconnecting me with people, but then it became unusable, followed by actually evil.

I guess we can all make our own choices and boycott Royal Society journals, funding and meetings etc (or whatever they do!)!

Rachel wearing very flimsy looking apron, mask and visor in NHS setting

Here I am in 2020 in the flimsiest, most pitful PPE - like so many other NHS staff, some of whom died from the Covid they caught in their hospitals.

Tory peer Michelle Mone - who today lost her legal case & must repay the govt £122m - dares to claim she’s been ‘scapegoated’.

What, Michelle? 🧵

Not a radical thought. Radical thought is giving necessities into the hands of uncaring conglomerations of unchecked power. We should say this out loud more often.

Interested in removing particle-associated microbes from particles for eg flow cytometry, culturing, or other single-cell microbiology purposes? Led by graduating PhD stdnt Jordan Coelho:

Detergent-based separation of microbes from marine particles journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... #jcampubs 🌊

Is this just becuase they dont compromise on academic standards, and dont get education conflated with student satisfaction, like in the UK?

Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its technology in mass surveillance of Palestinians Exclusive: Tech firm ends military unit’s access to AI and data services after Guardian reveals secret spy project

"The termination is the first known case of a US technology company withdrawing services provided to the Israeli military since the beginning of its war on Gaza."
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

Delighted to see our paper studying the evolution of plasmids over the last 100 years, now out! Years of work by Adrian Cazares, also Nick Thomson @sangerinstitute.bsky.social - this version much improved over the preprint. Final version should be open access, apols.
Thread 1/n

Who fixes carbon in the dark ocean? A new study led by Barbara Bayer (CeMESS, University of Vienna) discovered that ammonia-oxidizing microorganisms contribute much less to carbon fixation in the ocean than previously assumed. The study...

Who fixes carbon in the dark ocean? A new study in @nature.com, led by @barbarabayer.bsky.social @univie.ac.at shows that ammonia‐oxidizing microbes contribute much less to dark carbon fixation than previously thought – leaving room for unknown players.
Read more: 🔗 dome.univie.ac.at/news-events/...

The richest man on earth owns X.

The second richest man on earth is about to be a major owner of TikTok.

The third richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

The fourth richest man owns The Washington Post.

See the problem here?

agreed -- and all because he tapped it in? Cheisa touch was sublime tho

SEM images of the three newly cultured methanogens from desert biocrusts. Methanobacterium sp. (A) with a long rod shape, Methanosarcina sp. (B) with aggregated, coccoid cell clusters, and likely Methanocella sp.

📢 🦠 🏜️ Meet the first cultured methanogens from oxic soils! Using cultivation and comparative genomics, we descirbe Methanobacterium limanense sp. nov., Methanocella ebodanensis sp. nov., and a strain of Methanosarcina mazei as dwellers of desert biocrusts.
With @anne-daebeler.bsky.social and other

The image shows a map of Europe's export trade in domestically banned pesticides. In 2024, companies in the EU issued export notifications for 122,000 tonnes of pesticides that are banned from use on the EU's own farms. The exports were destined for 93 different nations, most of them low- or middle-income countries.

Revealed: The EU's export trade in banned pesticides has expanded dramatically in the past half-decade, despite the European Commission's promises to put an end to it

New investigation from Unearthed and Public Eye:

unearthed.greenpeace.org/2025/09/23/e...

The role of Akkermansia muciniphila sulfatases in colonic mucin utilisation Akkermansia muciniphila , an obligate mucin degrader, is a major member of the human colonic microbiota and has been associated positive health outcomes. Mucins are complex glycoproteins that contain ...

Happy to have this collaborative work out on Biorxiv on how Akkermansia muciniphila deploys it’s carbohydrate sulfatases to metabolise colonic mucin, and that processed glycopeptides/proteins of colonic mucin are a favoured carbon source #glycotime.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Over the weekend, the world's richest man appeared on screens in central London to call for a race war and for the UK government to be overthrown. No arrests were made in connection with that communication.

Carbon monoxide metabolism in freshwater anaerobic methanotrophic archaea https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.16.676500v1

A comprehensive analysis of combined stormwater overflow (CSO) discharges to coastal waters and data communications by a UK water company between 2021 and 2023 Sewage discharges to aquatic environments present a real danger to human and ecosystem health. Event duration monitors (EDMs) from combined stormwater overflows (CSOs) are now fitted to over 90% of st...

A comprehensive analysis of combined stormwater overflow (CSO) discharges to coastal waters and data communications by a UK water company between 2021 and 2023 @envsci.rsc.org

pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...

The shape of politics in the US right now is increasingly that the media, political and economic elites are allied with the Trump regime against the actual people of the country who hate it

Poster showing the following text: PhD in microbial mechanisms of soil carbon cycling. Soil microbes shape the global carbon cycle in life and death. We study the effect of aboveground land management on belowground soil carbon cycling processes. We aim create a scalable understanding of microbial processes from single cells to populations to communities to ecosystems. Pictures with text: peatland restoration, sustainable agriculture and woodland regeneration.

📢 Funded PhD opportunities for UK candidates in beautiful Edinburgh. Get in touch if you're interested in a PhD on understanding the mechanisms of soil carbon cycling and the role of microbes. We work in different ecosystems: peatlands, forests and agricultural soils. Please repost/spread the word.

The first University to outright ban AI and assess on paper based exams and in person seminars will see the stock of their degrees magically soar in the corporate, scientific and intellectual world, and mysteriously wont go bust.

Iron-respiring microbes could have a role in sulfur cycling A species of bacteria grows when both ferrihydrite and sulfide are present, but not when either is absent.

Nice summary from Songcan & Marc 🙏 on our discovery of a new microbial energy metabolism 🦠 🧫 ⚡ 🔌

Microbial Iron oxide respiration coupled to Sulfide Oxidation (MISO)

@nature.com Research Briefing 😍 doi.org/10.1038/d415...

📰 Original paper www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#microsky #microbiomesky

If you are UK-based and working on any aspect of microbiomes (human, plant, insect, soil, animal, ...), please do sign up to Microbiome-Net for details of networking, funding and training opportunities.

forms.office.com/pages/respon...